Object detection and ID - a proposal

[Derakon]

ID by use makese sense - "I hit something and it froze - this must be a frost-branded weapon!"
ID by scroll/staff/rod/spell (and for same reason id by shop) makes sense - knowledge is not free, sacrifice something to learn something.

However, I don't see what sense "ID by walking stepping on" makes. Does every half-troll warrior suddenly get esper superpowers and can tell that given item will slay giants, reveal invisible and slow metabolism?

No, but magical powers are bestowed on items via the enchanted tags (on the pommel for weapons, in the back of the collar for armor, etc.), and the tags spell out the powers the item has as well as the proper way they should be washed and the "Made in Mordor" imprint.

As for why you do "when stepped on" instead of "when adjacent to", it's at least in part because otherwise artifacts would be recognized (and thus eligible to be lost) before the player has a chance to grab them. If you're in a massive melee with a pit of orcs and suddenly Azriel (or, uh, whichever Maiar replaced him) comes around the corner, you're going to be peeved if you're forced to bail and be unable to pick up that artifact that one of the orcs dropped. At least if it's only things you're standing on, you have the choice of sticking around for precisely one turn to grab the item before running.

[Nick]

Well, I don't want to do something that everyone hates, or even that a significant minority dislikes.

I guess it may have been better to ask what people think the ID system should be doing, and what they find fun or not about it. What would make the game the most interesting?

Looking more broadly, there is the question of what the game should feel like. Abbreviating horribly, I see it as a game of collecting objects and killing monsters to gain experience and equipment enough to kill Morgoth. The game is made up of simple building blocks which combine randomly to create challenges for the player in doing these things. It doesn't rely on trickery to make those challenges more difficult. But it also should be an adventure, not a soulless puzzle.

So my question is - what manner of acquiring knowledge about individual objects fits in best with this?

I should add that people shouldn't be worried about changes to ID making the game too easy - there are plenty of other ways to make it hard. It's a matter of what makes it interesting.

[Monkey Face]

I think rune based ID is best along with keeping magic ID for flavored items like scrolls and potions. That keeps mages with their early advantage while giving warriors an additional late game bonus. Keeping magic ID also means that a mage doesn't accidently read a scroll of deep descent on at 50' and plummet down to 300' where they are way out of their depth.

As someone else pointed out, Nick's idea is of little use for mages who lose the advantage of early identify. However, I would not mind it as a temporary alternative to rune based (which seems harder to code) except that I'd be afraid that once it was implemented, there would be a lot of resistance to switching to rune based.

[Cold_Heart]

Well, I don't want to do something that everyone hates, or even that a significant minority dislikes.

I guess it may have been better to ask what people think the ID system should be doing, and what they find fun or not about it. What would make the game the most interesting?

Looking more broadly, there is the question of what the game should feel like. Abbreviating horribly, I see it as a game of collecting objects and killing monsters to gain experience and equipment enough to kill Morgoth. The game is made up of simple building blocks which combine randomly to create challenges for the player in doing these things. It doesn't rely on trickery to make those challenges more difficult. But it also should be an adventure, not a soulless puzzle.

So my question is - what manner of acquiring knowledge about individual objects fits in best with this?

I should add that people shouldn't be worried about changes to ID making the game too easy - there are plenty of other ways to make it hard. It's a matter of what makes it interesting.

From your proposed changes it seems that you want to make identification easier, more accessible, less tedious?

Then you could change the ?id/_id/-id/spell to act like probing for items - identify everything in line of sight.

[buzzkill]

I'm not sure I understand what you're proposing. Can you explain how this would differ from the status quo? Unless of course I do get it, in which case I'm firmly against it and have neither the time or inclination to compose an thoughtful response to such a hair-brained notion.

But seriously, I don't think that the Nick I know would propose what I'm reading, so hopefully a better explanation of proposed progress is in order.

[Derakon]

I'm not sure I understand what you're proposing. Can you explain how this would differ from the status quo? Unless of course I do get it, in which case I'm firmly against it and have neither the time or inclination to compose an thoughtful response to such a hair-brained notion.

But seriously, I don't think that the Nick I know would propose what I'm reading, so hopefully a better explanation of proposed progress is in order.

Nick's original proposal was essentially to do away with manual identification altogether: items are automatically identified when you step on them, so essentially any item that you can pick up, you automatically identify.

[wobbly]

Another option is the auto-id poscheng has. Where you can set say auto-id on staves for instance & it'll automatically read an id scroll when you step on/pick-up an un-ided staff (as a free action). What you're suggesting sounds like how it works in Tome 4. I can remember disliking the aesthetic of knowing every item automatically and would dislike it here too. It wouldn't be a big deal to me, just a small loss of flavour.

Id by rune sounds much more interesting though I can see myself doing tedious things like standing next to baby reds swapping gear. I suspect it would be worth it anyway. No system is going to be perfect.

[Zireael]

I would dislike auto-knowing everything or almost everything on sight, too.

Sorry, Nick.

[Thraalbee]

I like Nick's idea. You already have this effect by wearing the right light (stone) artifact in PosChengband.
BUT ... if you do this why not get rid of food and start with the Phial? Id is just one tedium of many.

I believe it is too big a change to be easily accepted.
But I wouldn't mind sometimes finding a Philosopher's Stone artifact that brings light and auto-id's everything in your inventory and on the spot you stand on.

[Derakon]

Another option then would be to make auto-ID be a perk that only "turns on" once you reach a certain character level (30, say). I believe we already have instant pseudo-ID once you reach a certain character level, but we could easily be more aggressive. And let's face it, the process of identifying things is only really at all interesting in the early game anyway. Past that point everyone has unlimited methods for at least crudely identifying things (viz. pseudo-ID) and large or infinite amounts of true identification.

[mushroom patch]

It's a good proposal. Removing the explicit identification step and player actions associated with it makes the game cleaner and nothing of value is lost.

Any mechanic that leaves players spamming commands on a regular basis is not a good mechanic. See angband identification since angband was first released. I would not bother with use-ID or ID dancing with hounds for equipment. The fact that you can't tell what a piece of equipment does at range is enough to slow down the detection game enough to make things reasonable.

Edit: Also, re: mention of dcss, this proposal would give angband a better identification game than crawl. The way things are going, you can probably beat them to removing food too if you act fast.

[Nick]

But seriously, I don't think that the Nick I know would propose what I'm reading, so hopefully a better explanation of proposed progress is in order.

We aim to surprise

The point is, I am planning to make some biggish changes during the 4.x series, but I still want the game to feel like Angband. So a lot of my thinking is about what is essential, and what gets in the way, and I was starting to wonder if the ID game is one of the bits that gets in the way.

So I asked; and it looks like the answer is no (except for a few fringe weirdos (that's not an insult - I like weirdos)). I'm getting the sense that people want rune-based ID, or at least want to see what the game is like with rune-based ID, so that's what we'll do. I should point out, too, that I have no qualms at all with reverting changes that don't work.

Next question - what does that even mean? I think there's a general understanding that once you've recognised a property once on an item, you always recognise that property, but what constitutes a property? And what are the implications for magical ID, store ID and ID by use?

[debo]

Of everything in this conversation, I can't believe "It's a nerf to mages because they get to be less tedious than warriors as a reward for 20 hours of tedium" was actually an argument.

Also interesting is that no one decided to answer the question "What do you find fun about the ID game?"

Anyhow, I'm glad Nick tried.

[fizzix]

I don't actually think the original proposal is that bad. Rune based ID is superior though.

The problem with the current state is that after a certain point, IDing becomes just a bunch of extra keypresses with little gameplay effect. This is usually fairly early. I can think of very few games in which I had an unID'd item that was interesting to figure out what it did. These games consisted entirely of ones where I found a randart on a low level, or wielded a plain "slay" weapon. Unfortunately, with most other items it's easy to metagame to figure out what they are. Even then, because ID is so cheap, I only had to go without the information until I returned to town, or found an ID item (if ironmanning).

Rune based ID looks like the best possible solution to keep something interesting in the early game, while not making ID a chore in the late game. DCSS has an ID on wield, but the way the game plays, once you find a good weapon of the type you want, it's not worth even bothering with other weapons, except for artifacts. Angband has far too much loot to take a page from DCSS here. If Rune-based ID is too hard, removing it altogether is preferable to the status quo.

I agree with what Nomad said earlier. All consumables should be IDd on use regardless of the effect.

[Nomad]

Next question - what does that even mean? I think there's a general understanding that once you've recognised a property once on an item, you always recognise that property, but what constitutes a property? And what are the implications for magical ID, store ID and ID by use?

I'd say properties that should definitely be runes are:

* Everything listed on the C screen (resistances, protections, stat boosts & sustains)
* Slays and brands

Fuzzy areas:

* Should there be runes for plusses To Hit, To Dam and to AC? (would enable you to tell a magical from an average item at a glance)
* Are the missile weapon properties of 'Power' and 'Accuracy' runes? If so, and you do have runes for basic To Hit and To Dam bonuses, are Power and Accuracy different additional runes on top of that? And what runes should rings of Accuracy/Damage/Slaying have under this system?
* How does jewellery fit into the rune system in general? Many of the types have properties that make sense to treat the same as weapons/armour, but then there are a bunch of awkward ones like Teleportation, Escaping and Open Wounds that have properties you don't see on other items. Should they all be runes?
* Are Activations runes? Seems like you'd end up with some major "rune bloat" if you had a separate rune for every possible activation on artefacts. But then there are also some common ones like the element rings that would be irritating to have to manually ID.
* How do maluses work with runes? Should "malus to speed" be the same rune as "speed bonus"? If yes, identifying early jewellery like Amulets of Inertia will teach you a relatively high-end property like Speed really early.

Further ID questions:

* Should using magical ID on items with runes identify all runes at once (potentially very powerful and more far-reaching than current ID) or just one rune at a time (requires faffing with selection menus, potentially causes issues if there are non-rune properties that also need identifying)
* When/how should +To Hit/To Dam and the numerical component of stat boosts become apparent? On sight, on walkover, on pickup, on wielding, on use?
* For that matter, when do you first learn that a given item has runes and how many? Sight/walkover/pickup?

What problems are we trying to solve by reworking ID anyway? In my view, the main goal is to make endgame ID/squelch seamless. The biggest ID annoyance is the point where you're still interested in high-end egos but 9 out of 10 other egos are completely useless to you, leaving you in a position of having to keep wield-testing or magically IDing great piles of junk for the tiny chance of finding something good. Or similarly, when you have to stop and try on every ring of Speed or Damage that you find to learn whether it has a higher or lower bonus than the one you're already wearing. So my feeling is that towards the end of the game, you should never have to wield or use any item to learn its properties. (With the possible exception of artefacts.) Once you've learned all the runes on it, a piece of equipment should be fully identified by pickup at the latest.